Captain Harry Beckingham - obituary

Captain Harry Beckingham was a bomb disposal officer who dealt with lethal
butterflies in Hull and survived gas poisoning in Ilford

Captain Harry Beckingham, who has died on his 94th birthday, was a bomb disposal officer in the Second World War.

On the outbreak of war, Beckingham, a draughtsman fresh from technical college, was posted to 35 Bomb Disposal Section, which was subsequently incorporated into 5 Bomb Disposal (BD) Company RE.

He was given a day’s training at Sheffield, at the end of which, as he said afterwards: “We were given a drawing which showed how to deal with an unexploded bomb.” This depicted a wall being constructed around the bomb with corrugated metal and sandbags, with an area left so that a man could crawl inside and place a charge.

After the start of the Blitz, Beckingham worked on unexploded bombs first in the north of London and then – after moving to the Duke of York Barracks – in the West End, Fulham and Victoria.

One day his section was called out to the centre of Ilford to dig for a bomb when “out of the blue a German plane swooped down on us, machine guns blazing as he roared past”. Beckingham dived for cover, while the rest of his squad took shelter in nearby shop doorways.

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The next thing he knew, he was waking up in hospital. It turned out that he had fallen into a concealed camouflet – a chamber filled with odourless carbon monoxide created when a bomb exploded underground.

Such accidents almost invariably proved fatal. The bottom of the hole could be 30ft deep, and there was often no way of knowing that the bomb had already exploded. Rescue attempts were forbidden because they usually only added to the casualties.

Fortunately for Beckingham, a policeman had seen his head suddenly disappear, and his colleagues had rushed over and pulled him out — although not before he had breathed several lungfuls of the deadly gas.

Henry William Beckingham was born at Ludlow, Shropshire, on February 28 1920 and educated locally. He was commissioned in 1943 and posted to 12 BD Company RE in Leeds. That summer he was kept busy clearing butterfly bombs from the hedges and ditches around Hull. He had to use straw, set alight, to burn off the thick undergrowth so that he did not miss any of these lethal devices.

In September 1944 he was posted to Task Force 135, which had assembled at Plymouth for the liberation of the Channel Islands. He was involved in clearing British minefields in the Weymouth and Penzance areas until May 1945, when he embarked for Jersey as commander of a detachment of 24 BD Platoon.

He went to the Pomme d’Or Hotel on the esplanade and took prisoner the head of the German civil administration on the island. The hotel was to be used for the Task Force’s commander, and he checked the place for booby traps.

Beckingham took his unit to Guernsey at the end of the month and was involved in clearing mines and bombs along the coasts of the Channel Islands until May 1946, when he was demobilised in the rank of captain.

After the war he worked for the building division of English China Clay at St Austell, Cornwall, and subsequently as a consultant at Ilkley, Yorkshire. Settled in retirement at a village in Cumbria, he enjoyed sailing, gardening, and travelling.

Beckingham published Living with Danger: Memoirs of a Bomb Disposal Officer (1997) and Achtung! Minen! Guernsey (2005).

Harry Beckingham married first, in 1945, Joan Walker, who predeceased him. He married, secondly, in 1990, Mavis Hayward, who survives him with a son and a daughter from his first marriage.

Captain Harry Beckingham, born February 28 1920, died February 28 2014